Hillary Clinton to battle drug companies with plan to limit prescription costshttp://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... dApp_Gmail Former secretary of state highlights ‘outrageous price-gouging’
Biotech stocks sink even before Democrat details plan
With Americans paying among the highest costs for prescription drugs in the world, Hillary Clinton will take on major pharmaceutical companies under a new plan to tackle the rising costs of prescription drugs.
A bipartisan majority of Americans support a range of policy actions targeting the high cost of prescription drugs, according to an August Kaiser Health survey. Some 72% support allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs imported from Canada.
Even before Clinton’s plan was unveiled, it sent biotech stocks sliding, with the Nasdaq biotechnology index falling more than 4% after she tweeted that she would reveal it.
On Monday, the former secretary of state posted a link to a New York Times story about the staggering price increase of a life-saving drug after Turing Pharmaceuticals, a startup company owned by controversial former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, acquired the decades-old drug and raised the cost from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
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“Price-gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous,” the Democratic frontrunner tweeted.
Turing’s drug is part of a wider trend of small companies buying old, generic drugs and attaching extraordinary new price tags. After an outcry over an overnight price surge that increased the cost of a tuberculosis drug, Cycloserine, from $480 for a 30-day supply to $10,800, a nonprofit asked for the return of the rights to the drug on Monday.
Clinton is proposing a series of policy changes to make prescription drugs more affordable for Americans by capping monthly costs not covered by insurance for patients with serious or chronic health conditions while targeting big pharmaceutical companies in an effort to drive down costs.
The former secretary of state is due to officially outline the plan during a campaign stop in Iowa on Tuesday, as part of a series of events focused on Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, which she regularly defends and has vowed to build upon.
According to a campaign official, Clinton’s multi-pronged plan would deny tax breaks for pharmaceutical companies that market medicines directly to consumers, a controversial and costly practice legal only in the US and New Zealand, according to the World Health Organization. Clinton said she would push companies to invest in research and development in exchange for federal subsidies.
To guard consumers against misleading ads, Clinton would establish a mandatory check by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure the information is clear and accurate.
Her proposal also aims to expand competition between brand-name pharma companies and generic drugmakers and speed up the availability of generic versions of specialty drugs. To do this, Clinton has proposed cutting the market exclusivity period – the period drugs can be on the market without competition from generic medication – by nearly half, including for “biologics”, specialty drugs for serious illnesses which are often the most expensive new treatments. Critics say the current 12-year exclusivity period creates monopolies for brand biopharmaceuticals, which delays cost savings sparked by marketplace competition.
Clinton would also prohibit “pay for delay” agreements, which allow major pharmaceutical companies to pay other drug companies to slow down production of cheaper versions of their most profitable drugs.
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For Americans with chronic or serious health conditions, health insurance plans would be required to cap prescription drug costs not paid for by insurance at $250. The campaign estimates that up to 1 million Americans could benefit from this change.
The plan would authorize Medicare to leverage its purchasing power to negotiate with prescription drug companies to reign in costs, as Clinton proposed during her 2008 campaign. It would also allow Americans to import cheaper drugs from Canada and other foreign countries.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, recently proposed a bill that would ease the financial burden of prescription drugs on elderly Americans by allowing Medicare, the national social health insurance program, to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies to keep prices down. His bill would also allow consumers to import cheaper drugs from Canada.
Over the weekend, Sanders addressed the issue during a campaign stop with senior citizens in New Hampshire. And on Monday, he too responded to the Times story by firing off a letter to Turing Pharmaceuticals.
“Without fast access to this drug, used to treat a very serious parasitic infection, patients may experience organ failure, blindness or death,” Sanders wrote in a joint statement with Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, with whom he has been investigating generic drug price increases. “Americans should not have to live in fear that they will die or go bankrupt because they cannot afford to take the life-saving medication they need.”